The Dirty War in Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2005/davies1105.html

On September 8, 2005 the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq issued a human rights report, stating that the governing institutions created by the United States in Iraq are engaged in an organized campaign of detention, torture, and extrajudicial execution, directed primarily at Iraqis who practice the Sunni form of Islam.

The UN report expressed the greatest concern regarding arrests by forces linked to the Ministry of the Interior: “Corpses appear regularly in and around Baghdad and other areas. Most bear signs of torture and appear to be victims of extrajudicial executions.... Serious allegations of extrajudicial executions underline a deterioration in the situation of law and order…. Accounts consistently point to the systematic use of torture during interrogations at police stations and within other premises belonging to the Ministry of the Interior.”

In this report the UN has finally acknowledged what a small number of journalists have been reporting for at least 18 months, that a brutal “dirty war” has grown out of the U.S. occupation. On March 15, 2004, the New Statesman published an article by Stephen Grey titled “Rule of the Death Squads” regarding the murder of Professor Abdullatif al-Mayah in Baghdad on January 19, 2004. It quoted a senior commander at the headquarters of the U.S.-installed Iraqi police, “Dr. Abdullatif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for people on the street here. He made some politicians quite jealous…. You can look no further than the governing council. There are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people. They are politicians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived to Iraq from exile with a list of their enemies. They are killing people one by one.”

On January 16, 2005 USA Today reported on the work of Isam al-Rawi, a geology professor who heads the Iraqi Association of University Lecturers. He has been cataloging assassinations of academics in occupied Iraq and has documented 300 of them. He was unable to identify a clear pattern to the killings, except that, like al-Mayah, the victims were usually the most respected and popular members of their universities and their communities.

On January 14, 2005 Newsweek reported on “The Salvador Option,” the proposed use of death squads as part of the U.S. strategy to subdue the country. It noted that some U.S. policymakers consider this to have been effective in Central America in the 1980s. Newsweek cited Interim Prime Minister Allawi, a former agent of both the Iraqi Mukhabarat and the CIA, as a principal proponent of this policy. A U.S. military source told Newsweek, “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists. From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.” This source was expressing precisely the rationale behind the dirty wars in Latin America and the worst abuses of the Vietnam War. The purpose of such a strategy is not to identify, detain, and kill actual resistance fighters, but rather to terrorize an entire civilian population into submission.

[mom cat]

1. At last! Please rate this up for visibility. Thanks K&R